As a busy business owner, there’s a lot to think about – so in the whirlwind of December, let us help with you getting everything wrapped up (at least with your team – we can’t help with the Christmas presents!).

The world feels very heavy at the moment. This month at Human Everything we want to encourage everyone to look after their human, in and outside of the workplace, to stop burnout, increase happiness and boost productivity.

Whatever your business aspirations are, whether you are maintaining, growing or developing your business, you need to think about your people strategy and the sooner you do, the sooner you can start reaping the rewards.

Well, we can cut out the apocalyptical scare mongering that science fiction gives us and deal with the issue head on. The issue of being human in the workplace.

Basically, we want more of it, and I’m going to tell you why.

Human beings while unique, share something in common. We are all insecure. Some may be better at hiding it than others, but its there in all of us.

This week we wanted to introduce ourselves – at least the humans in Human Everything – to show how we have used our workplace reports to interact with each other.

The Human Everything approach is a holistic one, and meeting the challenges listed above isn’t simply a case of knocking each one off the list until you get to the end and hey presto, you’ve finished.

Following on from the 5 biggest people challenges we talked about in our last article, our attention turns this week to how to address these challenges. How do you keep the team together?

The five biggest people challenges: If COVID has gifted us anything, it is the opportunity for others to share in our passion to place the individual at the very heart of business.

Much as physical first aid prevents further harm, promotes recovery, preserves life and provides comfort in the moments before professional help arrives, mental health first aid does the same thing when someone is at risk of experiencing a mental health crisis.

In all likelihood you will have heard about the spaghetti test. This was an experiment that challenged various groups of people to build the tallest structure possible out of stands of uncooked spaghetti, string, tape and 1 marshmallow – which had to be on the top of the structure.

Mediation is all about mindset. Whether it is going to work or not, is entirely down to the people in the room. Whether you are going to win or not – well, if that is your mindset, then mediation is most likely not going to work. So no, you won’t win. But the other person won’t either.

We all have mental health. It’s important to understand that mental health doesn’t immediately equate with mental illness.

No matter how great your team is, we can always keep working on how we can improve team collaboration and communication. Now that many teams are experiencing remote working or hybrid working, feeling part of a team has never been more important, or more difficult to do.

We are starting to appreciate the skillsets that come with high emotional intelligence and are actively seeking people with those abilities in order to create emotionally intelligence workplaces.

As a business, why is mental health important?

Is it more important than getting the products to the clients on time, making the production line more efficient, filling the sales pipeline researching the latest technology or having the slickest and latest viral advertising and PR campaign?

We have all in our lifetimes experienced conflict. It’s a fact of life and in the workplace, it is inevitable. If I were to ask you what the positive effects of conflict were in the workplace, you may look at me like I had lost my mind. Surely positive conflict is a bit of an oxymoron?

I’ve worked with a lot of different teams over the years. Some good, some well, not so good. While you’re going through your daily routines, fire fighting, project work, the usual “work stuff”, it can be hard to figure out what it is that makes your team so effective, or not.

Many people will have gone through their entire working lives without coming across mediation in the workplace. Hopefully, that is something that will change with time – not because there is more conflict, but because organisations are more open to resolving disagreements and conflicts as they happen in a more productive and resolution-focussed way.

The past couple of years have been challenging, unsettling and have brought a lot of uncertainty into our lives. Our work routines have been disrupted, our freedom to roam has been curtailed and we’ve had to spend a whole lot of time indoors, sometimes alone or sometimes unable to get some alone time. This has increased stress levels which has increased the risk of people developing mental ill health.

The most important aspect of building great team culture and team relationships, is trust.

Developing a culture of trust takes time and open and honest conversations, carried out in a safe and constructive way. In particular, with so many people working remotely these days, trust plays a bigger role than ever.